An exploration of how a unique Canadian sensibility manifests itself in contemporary cultural forms. Students are encouraged to attend contemporary plays, movies, readings, art shows, and concerts to supplement reading materials.
Feminist filmmakers deploy film as a provocative cultural form to explore women's complex social and cultural locations and issues. This course explores theoretical and practical points of contact between feminism and film to encourage new readings of the intricate subject women.
Examines the interaction between the creative arts and contemporary legal and social issues presented by new forms of technology, the relationship between copyright and creativity, the concept of creative works as private property, and the conflict between artists and consumers in the digital age. Course credit exclusion: FA/FACS 3360 3.00 (prior to Fall 2011). (Crosslisted […]
Analyzes popular Black popular culture in Diaspora, including music, film, television, style, contemporary visual arts, and including such issues as production, reception and commodification, through the lens of Black cultural theory.
This course introduces students to Indigenous cinema in the United States and Canada, although films from Mexico, the Andes (Quechua) and Brazil will be screened when available. Students view approximately ten films and read works of film theory and criticism in order to analyze how Indigenous peoples use the moving image to re-present themselves and […]
Explores how history has been depicted through popular culture in cinema and other electronic media. Focuses on WWII and its aftermath when filmmakers began to rethink the function of cinematic representation and its political and cultural relationship to the contemporary world.
Addresses illness as a narrative device in film and other forms of media and by so doing, raises social and cultural concerns regarding the body, protest, transcendence and healing, as well as gender/sexual politics.
An experiential learning course on the study of memory from a cultural perspective. Topics include: collective vs. individual memory; memory and trauma; memory and media; historical memory; oral memory and testimony.
Explores the form, function and content of Spoken Word, in terms of language, rhythm, historical developments, social- political contexts, as well as key artists of poetry, rap, dub, slam, lyricism and spoken word as live and direct purveyors of culture. By examining performance as text and artist/creator narratives, commentaries and cultural discourse, students survey the […]
This course considers sound as a social, aesthetic, historical, material, and political phenomenon, highlighting how it integrates with contemporary artistic practices. Students will learn about sound art experimental music; be introduced to the physics of sound; and explore how sonic and extra-sonic forces collide. Through these foci, the course addresses the cultural politics of sound, […]